Three
by greenleaf-in-bloom
Summary: Jack muses on his companions. Post-movie. Hinted Jack/Will/Elizabeth. Sort of slashy, although you could sort of take it for brotherish love.


The things he enjoyed about IherI were simple and natural: the way her smiles slowly unfolded, the way she would never enter a room or open its door fully before peering inside, the way she blinked too much when she was surprised, and, as much as it embarrassed him to admit it, the way she smelled. Like warm honey and fresh wheat and dying summer days.  
  
There were many things more than that, of course - even when she was angry he marveled at her beauty, and her eyes were so accusing, so emotional. Barbossa would have called him a fool if he knew these thoughts, and Bootstrap Bill would have told him quietly later that the fool would be the one who hid emotion so deep that no one ever noticed.  
  
But they were both dead, and in both cases, it was in some way because of him.  
  
There were two people who were not dead that he truly cared for, and she was one of them. The other, of course, was Will.  
  
Will was confidence. He was strength and perfection. He was what Jack wanted to be, always - the good pirate, the man with the recklessness and the morals. Jack wanted to be like him, but being with him helped that, and so whenever possible he would stand next to the young man, looking at him from time to time in a measured way, watching him grin back. Once, when Will had had too much to drink, and needed Jack to lead him to his bunk, Jack had stayed and watched him sleep late into the night.  
  
The crew he loved, of course, but in a different way, a more matey, drink- with-me, do-as-I-say manner. They were his family, but Will was his closest younger brother, and Elizabeth was something else entirely.  
  
He hated pretending he didn't care, pretending it was all a joke, but he was a pirate and pirates didn't have emotion. Not real emotion, not like people had. And he had always been a pirate at heart, or so he had thought, loving rum more than women and looting more than rum.  
  
He thought breifly on this, and then decided that it depended on the rum.  
  
But Elizabeth. Elizabeth was perfect, and she made Will happy, which made him happy. When Will smiled it was usually contagious, unless he was smiling because he had just won another bet - in the three months since the two of them had found the IBlack PearlI, Will had succeeded in getting Jack addicted to gambling. And Will was much better at it.  
  
But if Will smiled because he was happy, because Elizabeth had just made him happy or because he had seen a beautiful sunset or for no reason at all, Jack smiled too, and he would feel like a part of something. A part of Will and Elizabeth, in a sense - a part of their love, because he loved them both, and sometimes he wondered just how much.  
  
Would he cry for them, when they died - or perhaps if, since he couldn't really imagine that they ever would. Yes, of course he would cry.  
  
Would he give up pirating for them, for their lives and happiness? Of course, much as he knew he would lose for it, there was too much more to be gained.  
  
Would he die for them? In a heartbeat.  
  
Would he leave them, never to see them again, at their request?  
  
No.  
  
He couldn't. It was the one thing he would never be able to do for them. He would suffer tortures beyond torture and a gruesome death. It was the risk each pirate took. Jack was no different. Even if Will hadn't saved his life more than once, and Elizabeth, too, even if they didn't owe their lives to each other a million times over, he would die for Will, as he would for Elizabeth, or as he would have for Bootstrap, and at one time, as he would have for Barbossa.  
  
He would take a million pains, a millions bullets and knives and arrows, to know that Will would be safe, that Elizabeth would be safe - although it was Will who he would be protecting, he knew, and Elizabeth merely sheilding from losing Will.  
  
But he would never leave them again.  
  
He wondered, suddenly, whether he would ever have to test those promises.  
  
And he answered himself immediately.  
  
No.  
  
There would be no test.  
  
If it would mean he would die alone, without Will's hand on his shoulder as it so often was, without Elizabeth's face to see again, but knowing that something he had done had meant their lives, he would be satisfied. He would have lived as he ought to have. He would have died as he ought to have as well. He would be in his place.  
  
Between danger, and Will.  
  
Forever. 


End file.
